Boston Globe's Scores

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For 7,947 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 54% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 44% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.1 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 64
Highest review score: 100 Autumn Tale
Lowest review score: 0 Argylle
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5,229 out of 7947
  2. Mixed: 1,553 out of 7947
  3. Negative: 1,165 out of 7947
7947 movie reviews
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    • 55 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Terminal
    Here's a film made by grown-ups for grown-ups, on grown-up themes of statelessness and belonging. Yet you could show it to a 6-year-old and have him or her understand all the nuances of plot and characterization.
  2. Walking the Camino: Six Ways to Santiago
    Despite the climactic hugs all around and spiritual healing celebrated by a tearful service in the cathedral, some moments en route make an impression.
  3. Friends with Kids
    There's also new piety and self-righteousness about parenting. Comedies are nervous to find the real humor and wonder in having a family. It's usually tragedy or nothing.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Man of Steel
    Snyder knows how to put on a show, and Man of Steel has a massive scope that’s hard to resist... But what’s missing from this Superman saga is a sense of lightness, of pop joy.
  5. Payback
    Debt is bad, we can all agree, as is its conceptual cousin, greed. It would have been intellectually bracing, though, to have a Gordon Gekko equivalent on hand to argue otherwise.
  6. For a Good Time, Call...
    This movie is basically where some small-screen comedy in the last year has been: "2 Broke Girls," "New Girl," and, their far superior sister, "Girls."
    • 55 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    A Christmas Carol
    Shockingly, the new film turns out to be very good, at times close to brilliant: a darkly detailed marvel of creative visualization that does well by Dickens and right by audiences - when it’s not trying to sell them a theme park ride.
  8. Yes
    The result is a unique time at the art house: a work whose badness becomes guiltily pleasurable, like a Harlequin romance novel masquerading as a dissertation.
  9. Wuthering Heights
    When Fennell swaps in her adult actors, the cracks start showing immediately. While strikingly attractive on their own, Elordi and Robbie have zero romantic chemistry.
  10. Almost Christmas
    The movie would benefit from spending even more quiet moments with Glover.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Becoming Jane
    Anne Hathaway's Jane is headstrong and clever, balanced and true.
  12. Green Street Hooligans
    The movie, though, is nonsense. At its most credible, the story evokes fond memories of the adult drug narcs hiding among American high schoolers on ''21 Jump Street."
  13. Taking Woodstock
    This is as safe and sweet a movie as you could make about America’s sex-drugs-and-rock ’n’ roll-est event.
  14. The Third Miracle
    Takes on provocative and stimulating subject matter, but can't bring it into satisfying dramatic focus, stranding three strong actors who are superior to their material.
  15. The Eagle
    Part of the trouble is casting. This is a movie that needs a great or gonzo performer to give it depth or heft.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Brothers Bloom
    Breezily enjoyable for about 10 minutes, until you realize the entire movie is going to be pitched at the same exuberantly manic pace. It's like being trapped in an elevator with a performing poodle that doesn't know when to quit.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Cloud Atlas
    Unlike "Tree" or "2001," Cloud Atlas offers more answers than it does questions, and by the end of its nearly three-hour running time - which flies by surprisingly fast, all things considered - it feels like the most feverishly expensive late-night college bull session ever. There are glories here, but they fade in the light of day.
  18. Hitchcock
    This is all a long way of saying that the best way to better understand the man who made those and dozens of other movies is simply to see them. There's no case to be made for a mangy shortcut like Hitchcock. It's all surface and formula.
  19. Resurrecting the Champ
    If most boxing movies are about redemption, Resurrecting the Champ is a boxing movie that goes to exasperating lengths to redeem its boxing writer.
  20. Things Never Said
    In a year when black filmmaking has surged with Oscar-touted films such as “The Butler” and the upcoming “12 Years a Slave,” Murray’s Things Never Said has a quiet eloquence of its own.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Hyde Park on Hudson
    I don't know if I've ever seen a movie as spectacularly tone-deaf as Hyde Park on Hudson.
  22. Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel
    One wants to find enlightenment - or at least entertainment - in this reconsideration of Playboy and of Hefner. But it's tainted.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Old
    Old is a fiendish idea only partially realized.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Dark Shadows
    Tim Burton has got his groove back.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Eagle vs Shark
    Watching Eagle vs Shark is like sitting next to a terminally awkward first date at a restaurant. You cringe and feel protective toward the poor, sweet dweebs at the same time.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
    By itself, the new "Pelham" is a solid, suspenseful tale all over again, so long as it stays in the subway tunnels and airless offices of the transit department.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Short Cut to Nirvana: Kumbh Mela
    At its strongest cataloging the sheer sensory overkill of the festival -- the faces, the food, the many roads to bliss. Only the slightest historical information is offered and no spiritual background whatsoever.
  28. Below
    With more character development this might have been an eerie thriller; with better payoffs, it could have been a thinking man's monster movie.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Camp
    A comedy, and for all its cliches and clumsiness, close to a great one.
  30. Street Kings
    Street Kings is nonsense, and yet the crooked, racialized world underneath the soulless mayhem is pretty fascinating.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Money Monster
    An acceptable time-waster for a slow day in a movie theater or a slow night on cable. But it never makes you mad as hell, so what’s the point?
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Yesterday
    It’s content to keep things light and predictable, with the result that one of the richest song catalogs known to man is here to prop up an increasingly formulaic and far-fetched love story. Yesterday makes less sense the longer it lasts, albeit with some good bits along the way.
  33. Ambulance
    The movie is what it is: relentless, shameless, and purely as an exercise in technique almost dementedly skilled. A Bay explosion explodes, a Bay collision collides, and Ambulance has both in abundance. For some viewers, the result will be 2 hours and 16 minutes of movie heaven. It might make others want to call for an ambulance.
  34. The Boogeyman
    The Boogeyman becomes an exercise in diminishing returns, though it is not without its pleasures.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Wendy
    Wendy feels like a holding maneuver — a way for a gifted young storyteller to keep one foot in the innocence of childhood while figuring what he’s really going to do next.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Greatest Game Ever Played
    What's missing here is the one thing any duffer knows you need: Focus. The Greatest Game Ever Played works so hard to convince you of the truth of its title that it never settles down to address the ball.
  37. The Craft
    Carrie meets Clueless, with a few good campy moments, some attractive cinematography, and an entertainingly lurid performance by Fairuza Balk, whose mascara, lipstick and spikey dog collar give the movie a decidedly Vicious (Sid, that is) twist. [03 May 1996, p.52]
    • Boston Globe
  38. Hellion
    Based on her short film, Candler’s Hellion pads its slender, commonplace, but potentially rewarding premise with contrivances, clichés, repetitiousness, and, when all else fails, implausible, arbitrary melodrama.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    I Can Do Bad All by Myself
    It’s the best Tyler Perry movie to date - the writer/director/actor/mogul’s most confident and competent mixture of uplifting black middle-class melodrama and low-down comedy.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
    Because its gaze is so level and so unyielding, it stands as one of the better dramatic films made on this subject (although it's not nearly as fine as Louis Malle's "Au Revoir les Enfants."
  41. The Truth About Charlie
    The closer you get to sorting out the truth, the less likely you are to believe it, let alone comprehend it. The latter half of this movie is as outlandish as a Mexican soap opera.
  42. Veronica Guerin
    Veronica Guerin hardly trusts you to follow its story, opening with the murder, then a series of titles that explain what's to follow.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    P.S.
    Contains more than its share of implausibilities and absurdities.
  44. Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy
    Brain Candy may be too safe a venture for the Kids in the Hall, but it still has more oddball charm than most Lorne Michaels-produced comedy on the big screen. [12 Apr 1996, p.68]
    • Boston Globe
  45. 8: The Mormon Proposition
    A deeply felt, and numbingly partisan, documentary about how the Mormon Church both bankrolled and masterminded passage of the initiative.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    2 Guns
    The movie has style but increasingly little sense.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Legend
    Legend is more than a gimmick, but not quite enough. The movie’s a testament to the Krays’ ability to get away with everything — for a while, anyway. But it’s better evidence of Tom Hardy’s ability to do just about anything.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Don't Come Knocking
    The finest scene in Don't Come Knocking is its quietest...The movie could have used a lot more of it.
  49. Mr. & Mrs. Smith
    Maybe my priorities are wrong, but this inquiring mind wants to know when these two will find a movie entirely worthy of his understatement and her naughtiness. This one has its moments, but it's also littered with action-flick junk.
  50. Mao's Last Dancer
    The ballets are badly filmed. The camera shoots them often from the point of view of the patrons in the auditorium or in a way that dishonors the choreography.
  51. Safe
    Writer-director Boaz Yakin delivers his conflicting elements mostly as intended, and with obvious ambition. But he fails to take care of certain fundamentals - most problematically, coaxing out the emotion he's seeking from Statham and young newcomer Catherine Chan.
  52. The Visit
    It’s vintage Shyamalan, with a twist.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Nim's Island
    8- to 12-year-olds will have a good time, and you'll have a good time watching them have a good time. Otherwise, the film's an oddity.
  54. Megalopolis
    That the director spent 40 years trying to make this worthless, 138-minute hot mess shocks me to no end. “Megalopolis” plays as if every iota of this once-great filmmaker’s talent got sold along with his vineyard.
  55. The Hundred-Foot Journey
    Unfortunately, this is one movie about food that I’m forgetting already.
  56. Darshan: The Embrace
    According to several sojourners who speak in the film, Amma is the embodiment of love. And according to her website, it's her religion, too.
  57. Aquaman
    Aquaman’s first glimpse of Atlantis is meant to convey wonder, but mostly there’s a sense of digitally over-busy déjà vu, as we’re reminded of more inventively designed fantasyscapes in “Thor,” “Avatar” and so on.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
    The lack of a credible external perspective beyond the narrative provided by Glass, his friends, family, and associates, makes the film feel too cozy.
  59. Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny
    As a movie, it’s a mess — and lazy, too.
  60. Irina Palm
    Doesn't deliver on a lot of fronts. But then again it gives us full-on Faithfull, who manages to bare herself completely without ever actually getting undressed.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Love Actually
    Charming, if terribly overstuffed, vision of romantic London gridlock.
  62. 3
    It's a funny, fearless, suspenseful sex comedy that, in drawing on science and philosophy and art and death, risks accusations of pretentiousness. But, even in its romantic idealism, the movie proceeds according to recognizable rhythms of how some people live.
  63. Viktoria
    Vitkova brings a distinct gender sensibility to her story, especially with her recurring imagery of milk and blood.
  64. The Gambler
    It’s just like the Kenny Rogers song says: “You’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em.” It’s time for this Gambler to walk away.
  65. The Flash
    The action gets increasingly overblown, even by superhero-movie standards. Bad as smash-crash-bash can be, portentous smash-crash-bash is far worse.
  66. Casa de los babys
    Sayles seems to be trying, single-handedly, to correct centuries of First World self-centeredness in Third World contexts.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Starsky & Hutch
    Stealing the movie, however, is rapper Snoop Dogg as Huggy Bear, the pimp/informant originally portrayed by Antonio Fargas on the TV show.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Beloved
    At 40, Mastroianni is looking more and more like her father, Marcello Mastroianni. She has his eyes and that air of existential befuddlement, and she's beginning to suggest the magnificent ruin he became in his later career.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Promised Land
    It's a fine line between interesting characters and "Northern Exposure" quirk, but the movie mostly stays on the right side of it.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Agora
    At the very least, Agora finally gives Rachel Weisz a role that almost exactly matches her intense, humorless, but undeniable star charisma.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Military Wives
    There’s nothing in Military Wives you haven’t seen before, but these are times of comfort food, and this formulaic comedy-drama about a group of British army-base spouses who start a choir is so determined to be uplifting that your up may be lifted in spite of itself.
  72. The Croods
    Some of the exotic landscape the group trailblazes looks imported from “Avatar” — happily, bringing that immersively dimensionalized, eye-catching quality along with it.
  73. Jack of the Red Hearts
    This is not “Rain Man”; it’s better.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    I Heart Huckabees
    Among the most insane mainstream movies ever released.
  75. The House Bunny
    The movie is a commercial for Hugh Hefner that makes his magazine seem like "Seventeen."
  76. Rendition
    Rendition is a reminder that, in the wrong hands, political outrage can be a slog.
  77. Trolls
    A Cinderella subplot involving the prince’s scullery maid (Zooey Deschanel) is similarly both familiar and tonally refreshing, from the whimsical vocals to the disco skate that subs for a glass slipper.
  78. The Sandlot
    It's lacking in eventfulness and drama, but there's a sweetness in it that places it a cut above most synthetic children's films. As a writer and director, Evans doesn't always know where to go with his material, but at least there's some feeling behind it, and this sometimes rescues it from its becalmed predictability. [7 Apr 1993, p.49]
    • Boston Globe
  79. Ice Princess
    A feel-good but inane Disney production.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Bra Boys
    Bra Boys uses reenactments to make the case that Jai acted in self-defense, but the tactic comes off cheap and unconvincing. Worse, the director never bothers to talk to anyone outside the tight coterie of insiders. Why should he when his brothers' freedom is at stake?
    • 55 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Hobo with a Shotgun
    Hopefully the last, of the fake trailer spinoffs of 2007's "Grindhouse." It makes last year's "Machete" look like "The King's Speech."
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Love and Other Drugs
    If product proves especially difficult to swallow, take with a grain of salt and three or more alcoholic drinks, or wait until such time as active ingredients Hathaway and Gyllenhaal have been more effectively utilized elsewhere.
  83. Playing by Heart
    It plays something like Robert Altman Lite. It's saved from writer-director Willard Carroll's increasingly forced linkages and made watchable by the resourceful acting of its ensemble, some of whom get more to work with than others. [22 Jan 1999, p.D4]
    • Boston Globe
  84. Take the Lead
    The movie partners all the cliches of the inner-city school drama with the cliches of the dance instructional, and the two keep stomping on each other's toes.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Young Goethe in Love
    What it is is watchable, a thoroughly professional piece of Great Man hackwork that lacks the invention and spirit of its obvious model, "Shakespeare in Love.''
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    When You're Strange
    The man inside that legend has yet to come into focus 40 years on. Morrison wanted the world and he wanted it now, and he got it. What When You’re Strange can’t admit is that he had no idea what to do next.
  87. Rocky V
    By now, Rocky of the drooping eyes and damaged brain has turned guru, emphasizing heart, soul and family ties when the evil promoter starts goading him and playing mind games with his protege. Stallone, said to be following Arnold Schwarzenegger into comedy, is starting earlier than anyone realized. [16 Nov 1990, p.78]
    • Boston Globe
  88. Bride & Prejudice
    In attempting to show us a love blind to class, culture, and color, she's (Chadha) also made it bland.
  89. Little Pink House
    Keener’s performance keeps the film grounded even as blunt scenes of the opposing camp’s machinations flirt with soap opera villainy.
  90. Agnes Browne
    There's nothing really wrong with Agnes Browne, except a tendency to take a few easy, convenient outs.
  91. Star Trek: Generations
    It's good cornball mainstream sci-fi, as close to brand-name reliability as this genre gets. [18 Nov. 1994, p.47]
    • Boston Globe
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Conspirator
    An important film, on an important subject, that has had the life beaten out of it by Robert Redford, a man who should know better.
  93. The LEGO Ninjago Movie
    A sharper script would have been the real ultimate weapon.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 25 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Prom
    One hundred and thirty-two minutes of shrill, self-satisfied jazz hands, The Prom may be the biggest disappointment of the season.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Lion King
    If The Lion King redux sounds wild, the result is surprisingly tame.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    MirrorMask
    Aggressive visual invention is rarely its own reward, and this movie does nothing to better the odds.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Frankie
    Ira Sachs’s muted family drama has locations to make a moviegoer swoon, rich music and cinematography, acting that’s attentive and wise. All that’s missing is a story.
  98. The Astronaut Farmer
    The real problem with The Astronaut Farmer is that it has no spark.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Tusk
    It’s been a while since there’s been this much dead air onscreen; over and over, Smith sets up a sequence, lets his actors shpritz, and stands by as the energy fades into giggly catatonia.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Harry Brown
    After a long run of baroquely plotted crime dramas like "Layer Cake'' and "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,'' it's a little depressing to come across a vigilante drama whose sole twist is its protagonist's advanced age.
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